A God-centered Spirituality

Spiritual Conference to Lay Dominicans
September 12, 1990
Text Revised January, 1999

Look at St. Dominic himself. His biographers said of him: "Semper loquebatur aut cum Deo, aut de Deo", that is, "he always spoke either to God or of God."

St. Thomas Aquinas

He summarized the spirituality of the Order in these famous words: "Contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere." That is, "to contemplate and to share with others the fruit of one's contemplation."

Meaning: not only must we have a prayer life before we can go out to preach, but our preaching, our witnessing to Christ must flow from our life in God through contemplation. Our preaching must be an overflow of our contemplation, our love of God and his truth. We should, ideally, speak because we are filled with God inside, in actual contemplation. We speak of what we see, of what we love. Like the Apostle Peter after Pentecost, who declared: "Surely we cannot help speaking of what we have heard and seen." (Acts 4:20 )

Dominic founded an active order: to save souls through preaching. That is the purpose of our Order. The first of its kind. Before that, monastic orders were strictly contemplative. That is why they were established in rural areas, on farms. Dominic, on the contrary, founded his convents in the cities, where the apostolic action was needed.

But Dominic retained many elements of the contemplative life, as they existed in the monastic life. Examples: the solemn recitation of the divine office in choir; times and places of silence (an environment conducive to prayer and study); community life; fasts and other ascetic practices traditional in the monastic life; etc.

The theology of St. Thomas is marvelously God-centered. It is the study of God throughout. God in himself: in his creation, in his work of our salvation. Even his moral theology is God-centered, dealing with man's return to God. How? God lives in us. We are the image of God that is being perfected when we practice the Christian virtues. It is also perfected in us by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, by the grace of the Sacraments. We can say with St. Paul: "I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me." (Gal. 2:20) Our salvation, our sanctification, is God at work in us. Which reminds me of Paul's beautiful word in Romans 8:14, "All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God."

Saint Catherine of Siena, another great Dominican model and teacher

The Lord told her one day in a vision: "Think of me, daughter, and I will think of you." Meaning, keep your eyes on me (contemplation) and I will take care of you and all your needs. Be concerned with me, with my glory. Accordingly, her spirituality is based on "knowing God and myself in him."

Which is like an echo of Psalm 36: "With you is the fountain of life, and in your light we see lights In lumine tuo videbimus lumen." (Ps. 36:10) And the word of St. Augustine: "Noverim te, Domine, ut amem te, noverim me ut despiciam me." “May I know you, Lord, that I may love you." We must know God first. Then, self-knowledge is profitable.

Medieval spirituality was always God-centered (and therefore very positive). It was not introspective, as modern spirituality came to be, with emphasis on self-analysis and examination of conscience.

Not that examination of conscience is bad. But we must not put too much emphasis on that. We need it more in the beginning of our Christian walk as we learn about virtues and vices, sins: when we have serious faults to overcome. But as we master the "purgative way" and correct our major faults, we become sufficiently aware of our shortcomings as we contemplate God and realize "in his light" what prevents us from surrendering more fully to him. Like a prisoner with an iron ball fastened to his ankle. As long as he remains seated, doing nothing, he does not feel shackled; but as soon as he tries to walk, he becomes aware of the ball that holds him back.

St. Theresa of Lisieux was instructed by Jesus on this very point. She wrote to her sister Celine: "Some spiritual directors, I know, recommend counting your acts of virtues to advance in the way of perfection (to observe whether you are improving). But my director, who is Jesus, does not teach me to count my acts; he teaches me to do everything out of love." This rule is excellent for those who are in the so-called "unitive way" and are progressing in the spiritual life. By following the advice of St. Theresa we avoid the risk of seeking ourselves and taking pride in our spiritual accomplishments, which is obviously not spiritually healthy.

Leave all spiritual accounting to God! Focus on God, his love, his goodness, his mercy, and keep praising God, rejoice in him, seek his will, desire to please him in all things, pleasant or not. And notice: the more you grow in the love of God, the more you become detached of all that is not of him and that holds you back.

Keep your eyes on the goal. When you go somewhere, you keep looking ahead, not on your feet, how you make each step! This obsession with walking would hinder your movements. Keep your eyes ahead on the goal and the feet will naturally follow.

Spiritually, it is no different. If you become concerned, even obsessed by your every move, to make sure you are doing the right thing, you will get bogged down and make little headway. Keep your eyes on God, on the goal. This will provide the sense of direction and the drive to move unhindered toward the goal, toward God.

It was a joy when I joined the Dominican Order and discovered that beautiful God-centered spirituality (theocentric, as we called it). That's one reason I fell in love with the Dominican Order. Let me share a few personal experiences.

First, during my noviciate. It was a marvelous year under the wise guidance of Father Langlais, our novice master. He was a holy man, and a man with a long spiritual experience, a man who loved the Dominican Order, who had been Provincial two terms, had founded a school in Rome for the formation of novice masters, had worked on the constitutions of our order published in 1932.

One thing I greatly admired in him was his pedagogy, something very thomistic: he kept holding him up to us, in his spiritual conferences and at every opportunity, the Dominican ideal, as found in our rule of life, in the lives of our Dominican saints and blesseds, so as to make us admire it, contemplate it. He kept holding it up before our eyes in all its beauty and greatness. Oh, how he loved the Order of St. Dominic, the Dominican saints, the spiritual tradition of the Order. We could sense it and he awakened in us a great love and desire to live according to this way of life.

In the same way he awakened in us a great love of God. We knew he lived entirely for God and for the Order, and for the Church. He was eminently a man of the Church. "Mater Ecclesia." Fr. Langlais' method of formation was admirable. I found it all the more so in later years as I reflected upon it. He formed us by persuasion, by presenting to us an ideal that could motivate us. He did not push; he attracted. He was not one who kept checking on us. He believed in the power of the ideal he presented.

I might say that he was an austere man in the tradition of the time, and the way of life at the noviciate was also austere. Yet, we all embraced it gladly, lovingly, because we loved the ideal of the Dominican life he presented to us. We followed a strict rule of life, very much closed in, yet we felt spiritually free, we surely did not feel repressed, because we were in love with that way of life: the Dominican ideal. This enthusiasm for the Dominican way of life kept growing as I left the noviciate to begin my studies for the priesthood.

When I arrived at our House of Studies at Ottawa there was much enthusiasm for our Dominican Life, especially for the richness of that life that came from the element of "contemplation". Our Dominican way of life provided ample opportunity for us to develop our spiritual life of union with God and thereby ensure a unique quality to our apostolate. We clung to the words of St. Thomas: "To share the fruit of our contemplation."

I realized keenly the importance of contemplating the divine truth with our whole being: mind and heart, so as to be in love with God and his truth and experience like an urge, a need to share that truth and make others love it too.

I learned from St. Thomas that we are moved to action, not primarily by will power, but by the perception of the Truth as the supreme Good. Our will is made to desire and want what is good. The more I see something as good for me, the more I desire it. I then understood the psychology of our novice master, Father Langlais. He sought to motivate us not by coercion, but by presenting our Dominican Ideal, our Traditions, our Liturgy, etc. as beautiful. And we just fell in love with it. I am so grateful for having had a man of wisdom like Fr. Langlais as our Novice Master. A true disciple of Thomas Aquinas.

To this day my personal spirituality and teaching is God-centered, and because of that it is eminently positive and joyous. That's the Dominican Spirituality.

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